


descend together (into the dust)

by foibles_fables



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, F/F, Femslash, Post-Season/Series 01, Pre-Relationship, a little dark but it's cool, complicated feelings, inspired by Trix, psychological trippiness, yes they will kiss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:42:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26526898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foibles_fables/pseuds/foibles_fables
Summary: “Hey. Hey, Beatrice.” Her stumbling tongue and cracking voice are already screwing this up. “Listen. Let her look at you. We’re all right here. We’ve got you.”Through the Halo’s increasing influence, Ava comes face-to-face with experiences she's only half-had and eventualities about which she was given fair and grave warnings. The feelings these encounters drag to the surface will, in time, become a threat.[post-season 1, in three parts.]
Relationships: Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva
Comments: 50
Kudos: 159





	descend together (into the dust)

**Author's Note:**

> I simply can't let these nuns go!
> 
> Inspired entirely by [this amazing and arresting piece of fanart](https://trixdraws.tumblr.com/day/2020/09/09) by [Trix (trixdraws)](https://trixdraws.tumblr.com/). She is an absolutely incredible artist and you should worship her! ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/trixdraws), too!)
> 
> Quick note: this is not the same post-season universe as Because the Light Is Close. Strap in folks, until season two is on our screens, the possibilities are LIMITLESS.
> 
> listen: ["Brother" - The Organ](https://open.spotify.com/track/2Pc5MqhIlbUr3BO65NCLaV)

_“Where then is my hope—_

_Who can see any hope for me?_

_Will it go down to the gates of death?_

_Will we descend together into the dust?”_

Job 17:15-16 (NIV)

* * *

This has all happened before.

Mostly everything has happened before. Eternal recurrence. Self-similar, cyclical, sickening. _Been_ and _be_ , _done_ and _do_. There’s nothing new under the sun. With an inexplicable flash of comprehension, Ava confirms it here: even though there’s no sun, she’s seen this night before.

 _Seen_ \- in a few of the word’s delineations, but not the obvious. Ava wasn’t exactly _there_. At least, not on this side of it. But she’s seen it nonetheless. She’s observing it now as the cycle repeats.

She’s imagined it. Vividly and often. Sometimes unwillingly, like shielding her eyes from something foul and then peeking through her fingers. Because this particular night’s drawn-in gravity still looms over each of them, a ghastly catalyst for everything that’s followed. Ava trudges quickly, panting, legs and lungs burn, heaving onward, hearing her heart pounding in her ears - for an instant, distracted by thoughts of the dead orphan girl who must be somewhere nearby and below.

Ava’s seen this in indirect reflections, too. Whisper-screamed from the sadness in her friends’ eyes, the corners of each longing frown, evaporating from each wistful sigh. A spirit resting on their shoulders, heavy and bright. A reason to both move relentlessly forward, and to be still and remember. They all loved her. She loved them. And none of them expects or ever expected Ava to be her. But the weight of that eyeblink legacy still washes over and through Ava, settling right between her shoulder blades, nestling into her new being with every scrap of fear, every scrap of wanting. Everything she wants to be for them, for herself, for a final settling of all things.

Shoulder blades. That’s another one - parts of her skeleton she’s never really considered until recently. Time passes no matter what, and the hunk of metal in her back is learning her, using her. She’s seen this night through its ethereal influence, like holding her breath and sticking her head through the static that separates one life from another. HaloVision, she’s taken to calling it, to the expected amount of groaning. This night has swept through her plenty of times as she lies in the dark, trying to distinguish between asleep and awake.

And when the pneuma takes her over, she doesn’t just passively view, she lives and feels. The Halo makes its once-experience her now-experience. Its last body, Sister Shannon’s body, formed by Ava’s body instead. Fragments, at first: a close and blinding explosion, then only searing blue pain. The shrapnel halts every other process, renders her debilitated. Screaming in pain, body limp, carried (the only part she’s already an expert in). Writhing in Mary’s incredulous and furious arms as the surgeon inspects her. No hope for her spleen, sorry. Lilith’s eyes, hungry. Beatrice’s eyes, resolute with a single tear. _Take it out_. A warning that means so much more in retrospect.

The extraction instrument, medieval and intimidating as fuck. Right over the Halo incapacitated by the Divinium she can feel burning all throughout her body, in her bloodstream itself. A hint of cold metal touch cutting through the dizzy clamor and heralding an end that would bring about another beginning: Ava’s beginning.

Ava never feels the skin break. It’s probably for the best.

So she’s been a player in this scene before - this perilous escape under the dark of a silent night from which the stars seem to be fleeing, too. She has. Hasn’t she? No. No, something is different. This isn’t that, _been_ is not _be_ , _done_ is not _do_. That’s new, and this is new. How much room is there for anything new? Her own feet are on the ground, and the Halo’s made her stronger, but she still feels burdened as she moves forward with a sort of desperation that makes her throat tighten around every swallow.

And she doesn’t know what this is. A dog barks somewhere in the distance, registering at the rim of her perception. She tries to think of why this is suddenly different, why she’s off to the side. Why this shift in focal point. Why the only pain she feels is the grappled pulling at her right side, and something nondescript but vehement inside her chest. Ava _tries_ to think.

But it’s hard to think when she suddenly becomes aware of the fact that she’s completely soaked in blood.

(And then, an immediate second realization: almost none of it is her own.)

The hidden door to the cathedral crypt - their marker of momentary safety - is the same as it ever has been. But this time, Mary is unencumbered as she shoulders her hasty way through it, wild-eyed, chest heaving, both shotguns brandished and sweeping the area of their retreat with every shred of focus she can muster.

She ushers Ava and the other across the threshold before following herself, hollering for the monk. Her voice still undoubtedly carries the farthest. Camila rushes in last, scurrying backwards into the space. Her finger never leaves the trigger of her M4 carbine: a tightly-wound union of skilled (but tense) flesh and deadly aluminum alloy.

And all of Mary’s insistent yelling amounts to a prayer answered - the monk is already waiting for them, crucifix held tight in a white-knuckled fist, having been alerted to the critical situation when they were sixty seconds out. Seeing him is half-relief at having feet on the stone floor, half-terror at having to deal with what comes next. What comes next? Ava should know this. Sometimes what Ava sees is different from what Ava knows.

The abundance of candles throw dancing amber shadows, making her dizzy, making it hard to see or to know. Maybe she’s seen this in pieces. There’s some partial cognizance that she feels afraid, that her guts are roiling, that she needs to keep dragging. God, they need help. She needs to keep hanging onto this extra weight on her right side, for dear life.

But apparently some part of her knows much more than the rest of her.

“I need somewhere to put her down!” The urgent, cracked demand is ripped from Ava’s own throat, in her own voice. But it’s far from her control - the words are jettisoned from a complete unawareness of an urge to speak. And for the first time she focuses enough to hear the noises so close to her right ear: labored, ragged breathing, busting into choked gasps with each movement, each wracking shudder. A delirious moan, too, as her head lolls forward on Ava’s shoulder, so weak and jarring from a voice that’s usually sure and stoic. It makes Ava’s blood run even colder. The blood all over her clothes still feels too warm.

“Sister Beatrice.”

The monk’s hushed but urgent whisper of her name finally launches Ava into understanding - and then quickly makes her consider the fucked-up way in which the disoriented confusion was so much better than this clarity. Because now, cast headlong into dizzying awareness, there’s nothing to stop Ava from _knowing_ how Beatrice’s arm is slung over her shoulders, how her body’s full weight (and _God_ , she suddenly feels so small) is slumped against Ava, all but dragged on the toes of her boots for the past however-far. There’s nothing to distract Ava from the fact that Beatrice’s hold on her has only grown weaker as the menacing minutes have passed.

There’s nothing left to tell Ava that this isn’t really, _really_ bad.

She should look, though. (She hasn’t looked yet.) She should just turn her head and let herself actually see how really, _really_ bad it is, rather than just this transient kind-of knowing. But she can’t, because the blood that’s now visible all over her clothes in the candlelight is already showing her plenty. The air down here feels nearly clotted. Ava’s nauseous.

But only two or three frantic heartbeats pass before Ava is forced to look, because the monk is clearing off an embalming table (good _fuck_ , Ava balks) for them to lay Beatrice’s writhing body on. And the way she clings to Ava - arm still clung across her shoulders, pulling her into a near-headlock, other hand jammed into the wound at her left flank, trying without avail to keep the life inside - makes every motion difficult. Ava loses her own breath when she sees the thick, deep redness staining Beatrice’s palm.

Mary, sensing the freeze, curses under her breath and helps with Beatrice’s legs. And Beatrice gives a sharp cry with the transition from standing to supine, but her grip on Ava doesn’t falter.

“ _Ava_ ,” she manages to gasp, before the effort of coherence proves to be too much for what her body is contending with. She’s overtaken by a dismal groan and shudder, instead.

And then Lilith materializes from out of nowhere, as she’s been tending to do lately. She still hasn’t lowered her pistol. “I’ve got the surgeon,” she announces, breathless, joined by another Sister, rushing over with a brimming leather bag.

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Mary reports, still absently holding one of Beatrice’s boots as the surgeon whips back the bag’s flap. “She took a bullet. High caliber armor-piercer. Don’t know if it was a through and through, we just busted ass to get out of there.”

“It was an ambush,” Camila adds, weapon trained on the door.

“It was Adriel. It was _Vincent_.” Rage smolders in Mary’s eyes with the clarification. “We had hands on the relic and were ready to pull back. Mission complete. But that bastard knew our next move, thanks to the fucking Divinium and his coward lord. Shows up with a goddamn army. A mix of hired mercs and poor folks taken by wraiths.”

“There were definitely wraiths,” Ava stammers, seeing smoke, seeing blood, just red, absolutely everywhere. All of these seconds she doesn’t remember living before she was dropped into this already half-in-progress scene. Seeing Beatrice, here and now, - sweating, gasping, trying to curl to one side to guard herself, despite the several sets of hands attempting to still her so the sister can assess her wound. Her head covering is gone and her hair is disheveled and she looks agonized, looks _scared_ , looks so unlike Beatrice that Ava doesn’t know what to do with her hands. They hover over her body, trembling to numbness, fingers half-curling to grasp at nothing.

Maybe Ava’s projecting. Maybe she’s the one who’s scared. Ava’s definitely the one who’s scared.

“Doesn’t matter what they were. We were outnumbered. And Beatrice took the hit.” Mary shakes her head, clenching her jaw. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill that man with these two fucking bare hands. Rip him right apart. He’ll wish I’d have used my shotguns when I’m done with him.”

“Mary,” Lilith cautions her with a quick, wide-eyed nod towards Beatrice.

With a deep sigh, Mary understands, rubbing her face with her hands and centering herself, managing to push aside the righteous indignation. “Yeah.” She takes hold of Beatrice’s shin through her skirts, giving it a gentle squeeze while speaking in a firm, earnest tone. “Beatrice, let her look at you. We’re all right here. Be easy, girl, we’ve got you.”

And it hits Ava right in the chest that the others all seem to know exactly how to be, what to do, what to say. They’ve been through all of this before, too many times, watching their family succumb one after another to the good of the mission, whatever the hell _good_ even means. They’ve mourned, they’ve prayed, they’ve sat with the fact that they will probably end up in Beatrice’s exact position. And that’s entirely fucked. Ava’s still not much for prayer and she’s still never truly sat with anything outside of her own narrow head. Not enough for it to come naturally. It’s a dose of violent fucking reality, yanking her to disgusting lucidity with all of this blood.

How much blood does a person have, how much blood does _Beatrice_ have?

Ava’s clueless about nearly every bit of it, the facts and the actions and the words, even though she’s been left before. Mercilessly. Total change, split-second. A cruel flash of squealing brakes, smashing metal, and the wailing of sirens smashes into her own senses. An audio track ripped from a time only partially remembered. She throbs with panic and wants to run.

But it’s not about what she wants. Ava had fair warning about this eventuality. Dreamscapes and words from someone who came before her and knew better than she knows. Time to face it, time to join the fucking club and suffer this cycle before she can shatter it. _Selfish, self-centered_ \- and if she’s never been a part of anything before, she is _now_ , baptized in Beatrice’s blood. In this life, finding people means the risk of losing them. What she’s found she doesn’t deserve, but she’s been all about trying to deserve it. Living up to expectations, clear and unclear alike, both from within and without.

This is the reckoning of a terrified leader engaged in the battle of being continually consequential. Climb onto those giants’ shoulders. Bite down, bear in, harden up for someone else’s benefit. _Try_. It’s heavy, in more ways than one, to be so fucking needed when nobody’s needed her before. She’s suffocating and it’s only in part from the oppressive crypt air (formaldehyde and phantoms, some obscene new incense at her throat).

But.

“Hey. Hey, Beatrice.” Her stumbling tongue and cracking voice are already screwing this up. “Listen. Let her look at you. We’re all right here. We’ve got you.” And she’s literally repeating _exactly_ what Mary said because she’s useless, and clueless, but something is better than nothing.

Her intentions must be stronger than her shitty execution because Beatrice is actually responding to her. Swallowing, quieting just enough to take a good breath or two. Eye open through the wrenching pain, glassy and reeling, searching.

Until they find Ava’s. And they focus, a visible heartbeat shift. They bore in. They connect, stirring, desperate. And in staggering silence, her eyes draw out words Ava doesn’t know she’s been harboring in her lungs (and deeper still).

“I...I’ve got you.”

Just three words, and her arms. Beatrice already has her pulled in so close, still gripping her shoulders. There’s life in her, still. It’s easy to minimize the distance. Beatrice’s arms have held her, even if hesitantly, through overwhelmed tears and smothering concrete. Ava can give recompense; she can send some of that same uncertain but tangible gentleness pouring out. One hand flutters to Beatrice’s clammy forehead. The other takes hold of the wrist Beatrice is using to guard her wound, gently prying it away, exposing her in a way she knows Beatrice never lets herself be exposed. A flaw, a weakness. But exposing it is the only way it can be helped. God, Ava hopes it can be helped, as she guides the struggling arm away. Mary takes over, securing it by Beatrice’s other side.

Ava pretends she can’t feel the blood coating her own hand.

And with their eyes locked, Ava wants nothing more than to press her forehead to Beatrice’s. But something in her screams that the action would signal a surrender.

She smooths Beatrice’s hair instead.

Camila glances over her shoulder, just a little twitch from her steadfast defense. “How bad is it?”

“You’re gonna pull through.” Ava’s murmur comes out with exactly zero reasoning, almost glaring at Beatrice’s pale face. “You’re strong. You have to.” And real leaders don’t punctuate or qualify their statements with an apprehensive _right_ , right?

“Her organs are pierced and she has already gone into hypovolemic shock.” The surgeon glances up from her quick but careful inspection of the damage. “I could place a few stitches in the wound, but without a clear look at the bleeding’s source…”

The prognosis trails off, but Ava demands more, and each word is like a nail in some yet-unclaimed coffin. That whole attempt at fortitude? Yeah, it’s collapsing without ceremony. “So it looks like this is bad, yeah? But I’ve also never seen this and you’ve all _definitely_ seen worse, haven’t you?”

Silence, though, prevails, aside from Beatrice’s rapid breathing. While all of her friends look at one another with tangible unease, Ava’s eyes still haven’t trailed from Beatrice’s indisposed gaze.

“Can you give her something for the pain?” Mary asks in deliberate avoidance of the tight-throated question, with a stark and sudden quietness that sends up the alarm bells in Ava’s spine. The sister surgeon gives a knowing, somber nod and reaches into her bag.

And time still passes no matter what, millisecond by millisecond, each one making its mark and chipping away at this new huge void Ava’s trying not to see. As Ava cringes away from the syringe in the surgeon’s hand (nuns and needles don’t fucking mix), and hates herself for the selfish cowardice, more gunfire rattles somewhere nearby. Camila and Lilith both jump to attention.

“Looks like the fighting followed us here.” Lilith presses a finger to her earpiece, listening to the report of the Sister Warriors in the secondary position. “Six targets incoming.”

Camila rolls her shoulders, gritting her teeth, riling up some determined bravery. “We’ll help the others hold them off - buy us time. You’re both needed here.” _Both_ , she says, but her gaze is trained on Ava alone.

Ava feels those last shreds of control slip between her bloody fingers as they both approach the table, all melancholic reverence.

“I’m sorry, Beatrice.” Lilith grasps her shoulder with more tenderness than Ava’s ever seen Lilith do much of anything; all at once, she’s reminded of this whole common past she missed out on, that she wants to know all about but has no idea how to ask. “In this life, or the next.”

Camila bends over to kiss Beatrice’s forehead. Cold, stunned disbelief surges through Ava’s system as she watches as a single tear drips from Camila’s eye onto Beatrice’s cheek. “I’ll miss you, Bea. Thank you for everything.”

Fuck. _Fuck_. Those were goodbyes. They were definitely goodbyes, weren’t they? And Mary and Lilith and Camila are all so much more familiar with this moment. They _know_. But Ava can still fight against it. She needs to. Rage, white-hot and prickling all over her skin, swells and ignites the Halo as she finally wrenches her focus from the way Beatrice is trying not to moan.

“This is Beatrice!” This is _Beatrice_. And something in the indignant way Ava sputters the name and then hears it echoed second later finally causes tears - angry, frightened, overwhelmed, weak, any of the above, all of the imperfect things Ava feels, all of the imperfect things she still _is_ \- to well up into her vision. “She’s our friend. We are not gonna give up on her.”

But the speech isn’t quick enough, or forceful enough. Camila and Lilith are already gone. They’ve reentered the fray, just like that weapons out and guards up. Soldiers, warriors, moving forward with well-trained and devout diligence. And it’s all absolutely wrong.

They’re not supposed to leave each other. Beatrice isn’t supposed to leave. _Never leave_ , that was part of this whole goddamn deal from the start. For an instant she feels the chilly, sterile air of the ArqTech lab infiltrate the stuffy crypt. But that sensation, along with most of the others, vanishes altogether as Beatrice seizes Ava’s arm. (And the Halo flares again, with a ferocity that swear-to-God singes her bones, tangles into her very instincts.)

“Ava,” Beatrice rasps, finally able to articulate her thoughts thanks to the drugs, “I’m not going to make it.”

Her eyes are drifting in and out of focus, and her words sound like they are too. Slurred, thick, dripping and messy like the flecks of blood on her cheek and forehead. And Beatrice is never wrong, but for just once, Ava really fucking hopes she is. But wrong or not wrong, Beatrice suddenly looks _confident_. And the juxtaposition is ludicrous: weak but sure nod of the chin where there should be a defiant shake of the head, this settled business of faith. Martyrdom, always anticipated and now come to pass. A change has happened, here - Ava swears she can see Beatrice opening to peacefully accept this. A seamless shift from fear to fortitude. Do good and endure evil. Forfeit the body for the soul’s righteousness - Beatrice is not nailed down. Beatrice has sworn these things to become part of something beyond herself. And so many times, she’s probably imagined this very moment.

(This very moment is unimaginable.)

The way Ava’s response shifts is nowhere near as smooth or dignified. More like a brutal whiplash, or any number of other very-much-unneeded car crash metaphors. The anger descends in a spiral, from her head to her chest to her guts, shattering as its freefall ends in collision with some invisible but rigid depth. And the impact casts the seething fragments in every haphazard direction, flinging her reckless hostility at too many targets, deserving and undeserving alike. Adriel, Vincent, the Church. Areala, the Halo, Sister Frances. The concepts of _worthy_ and _fate_. The Order of the Cruciform Sword, as a collective noun, throughout the ages. Lilith and Camila and their firearms and their earpieces. Mary, who’s been here, whose eyes Ava has gazed into at this crucial moment from a very different position.

Anger at Beatrice. Anger at the bullet, anger at all the blood. Anger at how her soul is opening.

Anger at _Ava_.

Absolute stinging fury at herself: the most deserving of it. Because she’s suddenly remembering more details she has no fathomable way of remembering about this mess - they just become manifest in her mind, throwing up whirlwinds of dust. She opens her mouth and doesn’t know if she’s going to spit out words, spit out venom, or spit out vomit.

“It’s my fault.” Strangled tears, hands clenching at Beatrice’s vest, pure reflex taking over. The desire to stabilize and keep. “It’s not fair. It’s my fault.” A glance up at Mary, at the surgeon and the monk. “He was…” Eyes back on Beatrice and her fight to stay conscious. “He was aiming at me. I wasn’t paying attention. You stepped in front of it. After you’ve told me over and over and over to _pay attention_. All the fucking time.” The vulgarity slips out but there’s no space right now to care. “I wasn’t. I was distracted and you took a goddamn _bullet_ for me. What gives you the stupid right or the audacity to do that?!”

“Ava-”

“ _No_ , Mary!” Ava winces as soon as the hoarse vitriol hits the air. But no pang of conscience over something as fucking meaningless as a harsh tone is potent enough to stop the dismay from pouring out. “I need to know. It’s not fair. It’s _not_ fair.”

The world isn’t fair: something she should know, a blazing beacon of dead moms and spinal cords and orphanage beds and being unwillingly chosen. And of trying, again and again, to see and feel and know the worth in all of it. To see and feel and know the worth in herself, in who she was before and who she is now, because it’s all _there_ but sometimes impossible to perceive. Like right now.

Everything eventually turns into dust or gets covered by dust. In Ava’s head, the words _friend by your side_ , a devastating refrain stutters in repeat. She’s only just learned how to truly _have_ ; she’s never been enough to make anyone stay.

“I’m sorry,” Ava finally just sobs, no qualifiers, no excuses, no demands, letting her forehead descend to rest against Beatrice’s. “I’m sorry I failed you.” The futile apology is like feeling the earth crumbling under the soles of her boots and daring gravity to drag her down into the chasm.

And it’s particularly not fair that Beatrice reaches up to cup Ava’s cheek with a shaking hand, an emanation of grace and solace even with a goddamn bullet intended for Ava buried in her abdomen. “ _Ava_. Not your fault,” she promises. Slow words, but strong words. Words for Ava when she needs them, always, even now. As Beatrice speaks, her eyes look like her own. Dark and clear and calm. Ava almost forgets the gruesome details. “This is the path of life for a Sister Warrior. I did what any other would. The Halo must be protected. _You_ must not be lost.”

“Don’t even pretend that my life is worth more than yours. It’s not, Beatrice. _Please_.” The imploring is a whispered request for something Ava can’t even manifest. “I’m not ready to let you go. Don’t leave me- _us_ , here alone.”

Selfish. _I,_ _I’m_ , _me, my_. She’s picking up on it, making all quick amendments to the usual pronouns. Stay for them. No, not now, stay, for Ava. Stay.

“You’ll still never be alone. And you are ready. We both know it.” Beatrice nods against Ava, fingers twitching. “Keep the Halo safe until you can carry out your intention. Be the last, for all of us.” A pause. “Thank you, Ava.”

“For what?” Ava sniffs, hating how foolish it sounds, hating how she can’t pull anything else out of the thrashing under her sternum.

A smile, then. Tiny but true, if not pained. Guarded and private, but just like her words: for Ava. “For not being everyone. Even when you miss the point at first. For seeing, and for knowing. And for not turning away.”

And the way their eyes stay locked through Ava’s recognition of every connotation is havoc.

“Beautiful,” Ava affirms, one word forced out through her own senseless fear.

One word, just in time. (Hopefully.)

But Ava doesn’t have to watch Beatrice relinquish the pain, give up her breath, join the ranks of the martyrs before her. To become another strong woman lost to a grandly-contrived trick - one established by ruthless men a millennia ago and perpetuated through countless lies and manipulations. (And whose are the names on the statues? Whose names are the ones forgotten, left forever there in the dust?)

Ava swore to break chains, not forge links in the wake of her burdened existence. There’s a way to begin this new beginning: by trying something she’s been considering in secret only, anxious about failing at it, working though her own body and imagining someone else’s. One hand on Beatrice’s wound - not concerned, now, with all of the blood - the other over Beatrice’s heart. Fast pulse, somehow Ava can feel it. She beseeches the Halo. Reaching through the static and the pneuma, reaching beyond, moving the energy through her heartbeat and through all of these awkward words, bursting around, left unsaid. All other motion halts, like the very air is suspended within itself, allowing Ava to catch sparse glimpses of her intention. _Heal_. Not her own body, not passive, not selfish, giving up instead of consuming. And there’s feedback in the atoms of Beatrice’s body and Ava’s body, there’s resistance, there’s radiation of _impossible_ , but Ava holds her breath and shoves against the constraints. Defiance, bearing a new set of fangs. She would shove against anything, against divinity, would shove desperately against God himself.

The Halo is powerful but not free from limits. The torrent turns to a trickle with nothing to show for it but ineffective hands and a bloody wound on a fading body.

Not enough then, not enough still.

But in the dwindling residuality, another solution entifies: the instrument which Ava knows is in the surgeon’s bag, waiting for the Next in Line, unaware that this is the end. Maybe this shouldn’t be the end. At least, maybe not in the way Ava envisioned it in that snap of adrenaline after meeting Sister Shannon. There’s a way out of this, there’s a way for both, together, to become something different. And the direction doesn’t matter - descend, ascend, or transcend, every level messy and complex. _Worthy_ is a heavy descriptor but Ava knows who can wear it. (And who can be saved through it.)

"Take it _out_!"

The Halo depletes.

* * *

And Ava wakes in a cold sweat, with the command to _take it out_ tearing from her throat and scattering into the apathetic spaces of the makeshift Arq-Tech bunk room. She’s the last one of her friends awake - the other cots are empty. This is something that’s become more common: waking alone.

As she breaks the barrier of lucidity, silence smooths out the echoes until it’s as though the words were never cried out at all. But even if the air is unmarred, they leave remnants on her body - the pounding heart, the ragged breathing, the tears drying in stiff tracks on her cheeks. There’s a dull scorching over her spine, too. The Halo was discharging as she slept, throttling at nothing in particular. Ava swallows past the lump in her throat.

She thinks, _again_. And she shivers with wondering: does all recurrence have to be eternal? The same dream, three nights out of the last four - spared for the one only because she was staring numbly at the ceiling instead, because memorizing each tile and crevice looming above was preferable to hearing those goodbyes. Or seeing those eyes change from frightened to nearly ecstatic.

Her hands hurt like a new bruise; they’re clean, but they don’t feel like it. The damage is invisible but for how long?

Ava finally breathes in deep, trying to shake off the phantoms, trying to draw the early morning sunlight into her veins. It makes it halfway in, maybe. The dread won’t let itself be purged.

Another day separating them from Rome. Another day under the stealthy shroud of Jillian Salvius and the sterile Arq-Tech air. Another day of waiting and watching and listening and planning. Another day safe from the nightmare, until she closes her eyes again and the cycle will repeat.

Ava’s seen it too much already.

(But for all she’s seen, it’s never played through to a true ending. And that’s probably for the best.)

**Author's Note:**

> _to be concluded [I promise]_
> 
> Hope I didn't ruin your day!


End file.
